So what did your bike cost you BITD then?

[yo-Nate-y]

My first real bike was my (still owned) 1991 Team Fat Chance Yo Eddy. Out the door with a pair of shoes, helmet, sales tax, and a free water bottle it was $2300. Took me about a year to save up for it doing odd jobs (I was 13 years old, mind you). I put almost $2,000 down at the end of the summer and it was on lay away from then on with a few hundred left, and me with no real income generation possible once school started.

....then after a few months of $5/$10/$20 dollar contributions from me, my mom swept in and paid the remaining couple hundred and I found it under the Christmas tree My plan had been to get it done with birthday money (end of January) so it was a total surprise.

 

[Groundoggy]

$650 for an '89 GT Karakorum in Granite. Then I got home and looked at the brochure and saw for $120 more I could get the K2 in a purplish version of that Granite paint job called Violet Thunder and I did love me some purple back then.

 

[Thunderchief]

My first "proper" MTB was my Rocky Mountain Hammer, bought for me by my folks for I think £800 from Crag Rat Cycles (F K Sharps) in Lincoln in 1993. Hammered it like crazy, a great bike and I still have it. you can see it in the pic hung up on the wall. It basically looks the same now, I'm thinking of restoring her to the spec she was in when I raced.

My first "Proper" MTB I bought for my self was also my last, my Marin Quake 9, bought for £1800 (I think) from Arrow Cycles in Lincoln in 1997. A great bike as well, so good she is still my only ride. (modified significantly, as I have posted in another thread here somewhere)

Both Pics were taken around 1999/2000 time.



I edited this to change the date of my Rocky, I got it in '93 not '92, and its a '93 bike.

 

[Matthews]

My first was a 2nd hand Raleigh Mustang (about £20) but it broke down nearly every time out , so off I trotted to see nice Mr Bank Manager for a wee loan (yes you could do that back then) and I got my Muddy Fox Alu Pro for a hefty £550 (£100 off as it was a 91 model and I bought it in 92), still got it today (it didn't win BOM when I put it forward last year but hey ho) but it's just about retired now due to cracked downtube .
Matthew

 

[makster]

Mine was a 1988 Jamis Dakota. I'd saved all through the summer of 1989 in an effort to buy a stumpy but just didn't have enough.
Instead I found a last years Dakota lurking at the back of a showroom and did a deal for cash.
I think it worked out around £350!
The original was stolen from my parent shed in 1991, but I have recreated it...

 

[FMJ]

 

[doctor-bond]

If I remember rightly, my Stumpie was around 400 notes secondhand in 1989. I bought it from a private classifieds advert in MBUK. If anyone has a back issue (probably from the early/ Spring part of the year) it would be great to unearth it. The bike was in Bristol and I remember it being advertised as a 'very fast bike' (that and the test where Paul Hinton (?) ragged one round Lanzarote (?) was enough to get me driving 500 miles to pick it up.

Only got one contemporary pic left (and it's not sepia because I'm that old, just the effects of poor photography then and now)

 

[Agency_Scum]

Bought my new '93 Parkpre Sceptre Comp with my tax rebate for £830. Bliss.

 

[klasse]

'93 Stumpjumper cost $900 USD + tax

 

[Rich34]

I worked all through the summer of '89 (why can't I get Bryan Adams out of my head all of a sudden...) at Halfords to save up enough to buy a Specialized Rockhopper from them. With the Boots (who owned Halfords) staff discount I think I got it for less than £400. I think retail was either £450 or £499.99.

One of the front cantilever bosses broke after a couple of weeks so it languished in the garage while Halfords sourced a replacement fork. The wait was agonising (as were the "that never happens on Raleigh Mustangs" comments from the lads on the car accessories floor) but they got it in the end and I never had any more trouble with the bike. Sold it a couple of years later to build up an Overburys Pioneer. Still have a soft spot for Specializeds of that era.